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NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
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On October 01 2026 06:44 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2026 06:16 dyhb wrote:On October 01 2026 05:30 WombaT wrote:
The IDF sure kills a lot of civilians and journalists for an organisation not trying to I nominate WombaT for telling every nation that's ever fought urban battles his groundbreaking idea to try harder to not kill civilians. I mean not carpet bombing civilian areas does tend to help with that. You think Israel does carpet bombing, and Hamas respects civilian areas? Yes, the whole problem in this conflict is that neither is true, but there are some willing stooges out there that are unaware of their ignorance regarding Israel, Hamas, and the rules of war.
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On October 01 2026 07:14 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2026 05:28 RJGooner wrote:On October 01 2026 04:50 KwarK wrote:On September 30 2026 23:22 PremoBeats wrote:On September 29 2026 08:13 KwarK wrote:
For the killing of journalists I feel like the bar should be proving that all of them are really enemy combatants. What if publishing the evidence would compromise intelligence sources or methods? Or endangers mules? "Israel must publicly prove that every journalist was an enemy combatant” isn't a workable evidentiary standard. Some intelligence may be genuine but impossible to disclose without compromising sources, surveillance capabilities, or ongoing operations. There is also a distinction between someone being a journalist, someone being affiliated with an armed group, and someone actually losing civilian protection under IHL through direct participation in hostilities. Those aren't necessarily the same thing. Perhaps only one of several targets was a threat, but a high priority one, thus the others were deemed necessary sacrifice. The CPJ just completed a major review after discovering that some people previously classified as journalists were actually Hamas / PIJ combatants. It removed several people and says its remaining list excludes people it found to have been engaging in combat. The numbers of killed journalists matches the overall death count in Gaza in terms of deaths over time... high spikes in the first two years, now getting ever lower. There are still roughly 1k journalists working in Gaza. If the IDF's goal was to somehow scare them away without actually saying "we kill journalists, because they are journalists" I don't think it works really well, while most certainly having the effect of alienating allies and the Western world in general. On September 30 2026 01:30 Jankisa wrote:On September 29 2026 08:11 PremoBeats wrote:On September 28 2026 23:55 LightSpectra wrote:
You are extremely close to getting the point. Let's imagine for a moment a world where Israel kills journalists indiscriminately and claims all of them are Hamas-affiliated post-facto to avoid accountability. How would that world look different from the world we're currently in? So you are asserting that this is what is happening. What evidence do you have for that, beyond the hypothetical itself and "I don't like Israel and to me that is the only possible option."? Because there is an important distinction between “Israel killed a journalist and later claimed he was Hamas-affiliated” and “Israel indiscriminately kills journalists and simply invents Hamas affiliations afterward.” Israel has, in fact, provided evidence in at least some cases, including documents it says identify particular journalists as Hamas/PIJ operatives. Whether that evidence is sufficient or independently verified is another question, but it means the “they just make it up afterward” explanation can't simply be assumed. And I still don't see the strategic logic of Israel deliberately and indiscriminately killing journalists who aren't involved with Hamas or PIJ. That would create enormous international scrutiny while providing no obvious military benefit. @Jankisa: I asked you specific follow up questions. Are you able to look five posts above or is that too much to ask for? How about we discuss one of our follow ups one at a time? Perhaps that makes it easier for you. Let's start with this: "So what exactly do you want to discuss about these 2 cases that makes you think undermine the general points and concessions that have already been made? If it's evidence of unlawful conduct or failures of accountability, that's a substantially narrower claim than evidence of a deliberate policy of targeting journalists, let alone genocidal intent." I'm absolutely not going to read your bs excuses for not engaging with these obvious examples of IDF blowing up, intentionally, groups of journalists or with your weak attempts to make it about semantics of genocide. You can either say yes, these cases are problematic, or you can provide evidence and explanations which I'm not aware of that might shed a different light on them, but you are, again, completely refusing to engage with this in a way that is useful. The thesis is that Israel intentionally targets journalists to scare them out of reporting, which is a war crime, they are also refusing to investigate and impose punishment on the units responsible for them, which encourages other units and commanders to continue doing this. All of that constitutes encouragement from IDF and Israeli regime for committing war crimes and killing journalists, which is consistent with someone who wants to continue engaging in genocidal actions. Which excuses? What exactly do you want me to do if not engaging by writing several paragraphs? I am truly not sure what it is you are pushing for. My proposal was the following: I'll answer your questions about one topic, then you'll answer mine. So far, I don't understand what you are trying to prove / show with your post that you re-quoted. Hence I asked what exactly it is that you want to discuss about them. To that question, you did not reply. So I ask a third time: What exactly do you want to discuss about the links / events you posted? I seriously don't understand how they undermine the broader points I made. If you want me to blindly say "Yes, it bothers me when innocent people, including journalists, get killed in a war", I can happily do that. If you actually want to discuss (without chickening out again like with the Srebrenica / dolus specialis example), I am happy to go on. But for the continuation, I will first need to know what you actually want to discuss about the links you posted. On September 29 2026 22:21 LightSpectra wrote:On September 29 2026 08:11 PremoBeats wrote:
Israel has, in fact, provided evidence in at least some cases, including documents it says identify particular journalists as Hamas/PIJ operatives. Whether that evidence is sufficient or independently verified is another question, but it means the “they just make it up afterward” explanation can't simply be assumed. If you kill someone in self-defense, you can't then go on a wanton killing spree and say "well the first guy was in self-defense so we can be fairly certain the rest are justifiable too." And I still don't see the strategic logic of Israel deliberately and indiscriminately killing journalists who aren't involved with Hamas or PIJ. That would create enormous international scrutiny while providing no obvious military benefit. The obvious benefit is there's less live coverage of their war crimes and therefore more plausible deniability. I don't know why that would be so hard to fathom unless you're beginning with the presumption that there is no war crimes and therefore nothing to cover up. I am not arguing for that. But you - and others - are making claims that journalists are being targeted for being journalists. I've yet seen evidence for that claim. And I seriously don't understand how you picture Gaza. Do you seriously believe that the IDF thinks that it is a good tactic to deliberately target journalists through several command chains which could leak out on any level? Which alienates their allies and the West in general even if the leaks do not get out, while there are still enough willing journalists and Gazan population with cellphones out there to document the war? All for the questionable attempt to hide something which they actually plan to commit - again on several command levels - all with intent? Do you know how utterly absurd that sounds? What about the evidence from the IDF that showed "journalists" to be Hamas? What about the evidence from neutral sources like Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)? And isn't it only logical that more journalists die if you have an exceptionally high rate of them being in a war zone? While facing a much larger risk than the usual population? Do none of these arguments or none of this evidence make sense to you? Journalists go to jail to protect their sources. Why shouldn't the people who kill the journalists? Because in war intention matters. There’s a clear criminal and moral distinction between a journalist being killed as collateral damage in a legitimate military strike vs being deliberately targeted. Okay, let’s, for the sake of argument, accept your premise. Can we at least get investigations into the murdered journalists who were deliberately targeted? Given that’s the area you’re comfortable saying isn’t excusable.
To be clear, you’re the one who needs to establish that Israel deliberately targets journalists. Like many things in this conflict this is just somehow accepted as gospel with pretty minimal evidence.
Point to a specific incident you feel needs to be investigated and I’m happy to respond to that.
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On October 01 2026 07:07 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2026 07:05 PremoBeats wrote:
Do I really have to type this out? Britain was conducting a decades-long internal counter-insurgency against the IRA, primarily using intelligence, policing, arrests and ground operations. Israel was responding to a large-scale cross-border attack by a territorial armed organization with a substantial military and tunnel infrastructure, and subsequently fought a major combined-arms war in one of the world's most densely populated territories. The fact that Britain didn't respond to the IRA with Gaza-style bombardment therefore doesn't tell us much about what military options Israel faced. How you would even try to compare the two is incomprehensible to me.
- Britain controlled the territory
- Northern Ireland was part of the UK
- The British could arrest suspects and conduct intelligence operations
- There was an established police and judicial system
- The IRA's military capabilities were substantially smaller than Hamas's post-October-7th capabilities
On another rare occasion, I agree with Nebu though. My gut feeling is that WombaT is indeed a good person. Strive to be more like him.
Same to you.
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Northern Ireland27436 Posts
On October 01 2026 06:59 RJGooner wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2026 06:48 WombaT wrote:
It’s almost like you don’t have to do that. The British state’s response to the Troubles wasn’t just to bomb anywhere the IRA might be, and the conflict’s casualty figures are considerably lower as a result Israel never carpet-bombed Gaza. I’m no expert on British military policy but I wonder if their response might have been different if the IRA had raped and murdered 1200 people in one day, took 250 hostages, and fired 30,000 unguided rockets at civilians over three years. Interesting thought experiment I guess
Ok they didn’t carpet bomb Gaza in the technical sense, they just bombed the shit out of it over a more extended period of time.
Sure, point taken the two aren’t entirely analogous. The point was merely that the British state didn’t respond by reactively killing mostly civilians at a 35:1 revenge ratio or whatever
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On October 01 2026 08:04 RJGooner wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2026 07:14 KwarK wrote:On October 01 2026 05:28 RJGooner wrote:On October 01 2026 04:50 KwarK wrote:On September 30 2026 23:22 PremoBeats wrote:On September 29 2026 08:13 KwarK wrote:
For the killing of journalists I feel like the bar should be proving that all of them are really enemy combatants. What if publishing the evidence would compromise intelligence sources or methods? Or endangers mules? "Israel must publicly prove that every journalist was an enemy combatant” isn't a workable evidentiary standard. Some intelligence may be genuine but impossible to disclose without compromising sources, surveillance capabilities, or ongoing operations. There is also a distinction between someone being a journalist, someone being affiliated with an armed group, and someone actually losing civilian protection under IHL through direct participation in hostilities. Those aren't necessarily the same thing. Perhaps only one of several targets was a threat, but a high priority one, thus the others were deemed necessary sacrifice. The CPJ just completed a major review after discovering that some people previously classified as journalists were actually Hamas / PIJ combatants. It removed several people and says its remaining list excludes people it found to have been engaging in combat. The numbers of killed journalists matches the overall death count in Gaza in terms of deaths over time... high spikes in the first two years, now getting ever lower. There are still roughly 1k journalists working in Gaza. If the IDF's goal was to somehow scare them away without actually saying "we kill journalists, because they are journalists" I don't think it works really well, while most certainly having the effect of alienating allies and the Western world in general. On September 30 2026 01:30 Jankisa wrote:On September 29 2026 08:11 PremoBeats wrote:On September 28 2026 23:55 LightSpectra wrote:
You are extremely close to getting the point. Let's imagine for a moment a world where Israel kills journalists indiscriminately and claims all of them are Hamas-affiliated post-facto to avoid accountability. How would that world look different from the world we're currently in? So you are asserting that this is what is happening. What evidence do you have for that, beyond the hypothetical itself and "I don't like Israel and to me that is the only possible option."? Because there is an important distinction between “Israel killed a journalist and later claimed he was Hamas-affiliated” and “Israel indiscriminately kills journalists and simply invents Hamas affiliations afterward.” Israel has, in fact, provided evidence in at least some cases, including documents it says identify particular journalists as Hamas/PIJ operatives. Whether that evidence is sufficient or independently verified is another question, but it means the “they just make it up afterward” explanation can't simply be assumed. And I still don't see the strategic logic of Israel deliberately and indiscriminately killing journalists who aren't involved with Hamas or PIJ. That would create enormous international scrutiny while providing no obvious military benefit. @Jankisa: I asked you specific follow up questions. Are you able to look five posts above or is that too much to ask for? How about we discuss one of our follow ups one at a time? Perhaps that makes it easier for you. Let's start with this: "So what exactly do you want to discuss about these 2 cases that makes you think undermine the general points and concessions that have already been made? If it's evidence of unlawful conduct or failures of accountability, that's a substantially narrower claim than evidence of a deliberate policy of targeting journalists, let alone genocidal intent." I'm absolutely not going to read your bs excuses for not engaging with these obvious examples of IDF blowing up, intentionally, groups of journalists or with your weak attempts to make it about semantics of genocide. You can either say yes, these cases are problematic, or you can provide evidence and explanations which I'm not aware of that might shed a different light on them, but you are, again, completely refusing to engage with this in a way that is useful. The thesis is that Israel intentionally targets journalists to scare them out of reporting, which is a war crime, they are also refusing to investigate and impose punishment on the units responsible for them, which encourages other units and commanders to continue doing this. All of that constitutes encouragement from IDF and Israeli regime for committing war crimes and killing journalists, which is consistent with someone who wants to continue engaging in genocidal actions. Which excuses? What exactly do you want me to do if not engaging by writing several paragraphs? I am truly not sure what it is you are pushing for. My proposal was the following: I'll answer your questions about one topic, then you'll answer mine. So far, I don't understand what you are trying to prove / show with your post that you re-quoted. Hence I asked what exactly it is that you want to discuss about them. To that question, you did not reply. So I ask a third time: What exactly do you want to discuss about the links / events you posted? I seriously don't understand how they undermine the broader points I made. If you want me to blindly say "Yes, it bothers me when innocent people, including journalists, get killed in a war", I can happily do that. If you actually want to discuss (without chickening out again like with the Srebrenica / dolus specialis example), I am happy to go on. But for the continuation, I will first need to know what you actually want to discuss about the links you posted. On September 29 2026 22:21 LightSpectra wrote:On September 29 2026 08:11 PremoBeats wrote:
Israel has, in fact, provided evidence in at least some cases, including documents it says identify particular journalists as Hamas/PIJ operatives. Whether that evidence is sufficient or independently verified is another question, but it means the “they just make it up afterward” explanation can't simply be assumed. If you kill someone in self-defense, you can't then go on a wanton killing spree and say "well the first guy was in self-defense so we can be fairly certain the rest are justifiable too." And I still don't see the strategic logic of Israel deliberately and indiscriminately killing journalists who aren't involved with Hamas or PIJ. That would create enormous international scrutiny while providing no obvious military benefit. The obvious benefit is there's less live coverage of their war crimes and therefore more plausible deniability. I don't know why that would be so hard to fathom unless you're beginning with the presumption that there is no war crimes and therefore nothing to cover up. I am not arguing for that. But you - and others - are making claims that journalists are being targeted for being journalists. I've yet seen evidence for that claim. And I seriously don't understand how you picture Gaza. Do you seriously believe that the IDF thinks that it is a good tactic to deliberately target journalists through several command chains which could leak out on any level? Which alienates their allies and the West in general even if the leaks do not get out, while there are still enough willing journalists and Gazan population with cellphones out there to document the war? All for the questionable attempt to hide something which they actually plan to commit - again on several command levels - all with intent? Do you know how utterly absurd that sounds? What about the evidence from the IDF that showed "journalists" to be Hamas? What about the evidence from neutral sources like Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)? And isn't it only logical that more journalists die if you have an exceptionally high rate of them being in a war zone? While facing a much larger risk than the usual population? Do none of these arguments or none of this evidence make sense to you? Journalists go to jail to protect their sources. Why shouldn't the people who kill the journalists? Because in war intention matters. There’s a clear criminal and moral distinction between a journalist being killed as collateral damage in a legitimate military strike vs being deliberately targeted. Okay, let’s, for the sake of argument, accept your premise. Can we at least get investigations into the murdered journalists who were deliberately targeted? Given that’s the area you’re comfortable saying isn’t excusable. To be clear, you’re the one who needs to establish that Israel deliberately targets journalists. Like many things in this conflict this is just somehow accepted as gospel with pretty minimal evidence. Point to a specific incident you feel needs to be investigated and I’m happy to respond to that.
I posted this 6 times already, 2 thorough investigations, video evidence, no action from IDF to address them.
You and your friends refuse to address those and use dishonest framing like "journalists get killed".
No, they get targeted and murdered with no consequences for murderers, this is the thesis, it's been like that and now 2 more pages of Premo "I like to go into details" completely ignoring this with you chiming in.
Here are the investigations again:
On September 02 2026 00:51 Jankisa wrote:There is a whole WiKi page for the journalists that have been killed by IDF during this war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_journalists_in_the_Gaza_warI already posted this when it happened, it's a great piece of journalism, it's very obvious that these were journalists, IDF with no warning fired a tank shell, then another, when asked for comment they said "they are sorry" and moved on. No investigation, no repercussions for the soldiers. That was October 2023. That builds a culture. https://www.reuters.com/graphics/ISRAEL-LEBANON/JOURNALIST/akveabxrzvr/Let's fast forward to 2025 in August, when IDF killed 22 people, rescue workers and (again) Reuters camera man, they were at a stairwell of a hospital, a known gathering spots for journalists, this article goes into details, again, plenty of visual evidence and absolute proof disclaiming IDF and Israeli politician claims: https://www.reuters.com/investigations/visual-evidence-upends-israels-official-story-deadly-attack-gaza-hospital-2025-09-26/No one from IDF has even been investigated for this, they are, when asked for comment saying they are still thinking about it: https://www.nbcnews.com/world/gaza/year-israeli-strikes-killed-journalists-hospital-no-one-held-accountab-rcna594406These are just the 2 very clear cases of IDF deliberately, with precision targeting and murdering journalists, lying about it and then refusing to investigate. They didn't even try to claim, in these cases that the journalists are Hamas, as the authoritarian super fans here would like to get you to bog down this in to. So when you are an Israeli and join IDF, especially if you are younger and have been exposed to all of the dehumanization and other anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim propaganda, and at this point anti-Journalist propaganda, you go into Gaza and you know that if you decide to kill a journalist (or a kid, or a woman) no one will hold you responsible, in fact, you will be celebrating with your friends after.
Let's talk about those.
1. Were they deliberate
2. Why are there no investigations
3. What does that have to say abut Israel's conduct in this war
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Alright, prove 1, if it is your claim that they were a deliberate targeting instead of an error of some sort.
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United Kingdom10000 Posts
Proving something is 'deliberate' is notoriously difficult, but in my personal opinion 'deliberate' is a bad standard anyway in this case.
Its not really proveable.
You can show, however, that stats heavily suggest that the killing of journalists is a result of IDF policy, and that even knowing about the results of this policy, Israel weren't motivated to change anything or do anything to mitigate it.
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What policy is that suppossed to be? Kill journalists?
I can only requote my former replies to LightSpectre...
"
Do you seriously believe that the IDF thinks that it is a good tactic to deliberately target journalists through several command chains which could leak out on any level? Which alienates their allies and the West in general even if the leaks do not get out, while there are still enough willing journalists and Gazan population with cellphones out there to document the war? All for the questionable attempt to hide something which they actually plan to commit - again on several command levels - all with intent? Do you know how utterly absurd that sounds?
"
"
just did some very rough number crunching in regards to geographic concentration of journalists relative to the active war zone:
Using 2026 estimates, Gaza stands out by far: its entire 300 km² territory and roughly 1,200 journalists correspond to only about 0,3 million m² per journalist. By comparison, Sudan's active conflict areas are roughly 0,7 - 2 million m² per journalist, while Ukraine's much larger active combat belt - 24,000 - 48,000 km² - may have on the order of 120 - 480 million m² per frontline journalist, depending on the assumed number of reporters present. The figures for other conflicts are generally even higher. These are estimates rather than directly measured statistics, but they illustrate my point: Gaza has an exceptionally high concentration of journalists relative to the physical size of its war zone, whereas most other major conflicts are geographically much more dispersed and have far fewer journalists physically near the fighting.
Gaza is potentially hundreds of times more journalist-dense than many of the world's large rural wars.
And in that equation there is no hiding among civilians and hiding among the press co-factor, which makes Gaza even more an odd-man-out.
"
And are you only talking about journalists that (yet) haven't shown to be Hamas? Or the Hamas fighters / affiliates as well?
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Northern Ireland27436 Posts
Why are Israel so restrictive on access to journalists from foreign organisations then?
Hey we’re behaving exemplarily but we’ll block access to the folks who could verify that.
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On September 18 2026 05:25 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On September 18 2026 04:25 Jankisa wrote:
"the substance of your posts" is hilarious.
You won't engage because you know you are full of shit.
Because you know you are full of shit you engage with anything else.
Instead you are going on "this is a tragedy".
No, a tragedy is when a lightning strikes and kills a family, a tragedy is when a child dies of cancer.
This is murder, deliberate, targeted, targeted at journalists and kids.
You still did not address any of the clear examples of murder I provided, because, again, you know you can't because it's clearly murder, not a tragedy, not an unfortunate mistake, a series of murders. It’s fine they can be investigated after the cessation of hostilities and I’m sure the perps will face censure… It’s just endless cope masquerading as nuance really. If the IDF was behaving in largely exemplary fashion, having foreign (especially Western) journalists embedded, or given freedom to operate is the easiest PR win in the world. As to why not? Occam’s Razor isn’t always the correct maxim but it’s pretty easily applied here.
On October 01 2026 22:06 WombaT wrote:
Why are Israel so restrictive on access to journalists from foreign organisations then?
Hey we’re behaving exemplarily but we’ll block access to the folks who could verify that. Well, we've gone from the IDF not having foreign journalists embedded, to they're embedded, but too restrictive. In two weeks, that's pretty good.
In another two weeks, who knows? Maybe some acknowledgement of security concerns, and the obvious point that any embedded foreign journalist that dies in the embed (while going off independently, free of restrictions) will just be blamed on the IDF like all the rest. Maybe even so far as to acknowledge that some outlets refuse to participate?
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On October 01 2026 18:40 PremoBeats wrote:
Alright, prove 1, if it is your claim that they were a deliberate targeting instead of an error of some sort.
Have you read the articles?
Did you watch the videos in the articles?
People clearly marked as press were double tapped, that is about as deliberate as it gets, all on video.
Of course, for someone like you who only likes to pretend like you are all about facts and proof this is anathema, so instead of doing your usual essays you are just doing one liners.
Not only a genocide denier, but also a huge hypocrite, usually comes with the territory.
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Northern Ireland27436 Posts
On October 01 2026 22:16 dyhb wrote:Show nested quote +On September 18 2026 05:25 WombaT wrote:On September 18 2026 04:25 Jankisa wrote:
"the substance of your posts" is hilarious.
You won't engage because you know you are full of shit.
Because you know you are full of shit you engage with anything else.
Instead you are going on "this is a tragedy".
No, a tragedy is when a lightning strikes and kills a family, a tragedy is when a child dies of cancer.
This is murder, deliberate, targeted, targeted at journalists and kids.
You still did not address any of the clear examples of murder I provided, because, again, you know you can't because it's clearly murder, not a tragedy, not an unfortunate mistake, a series of murders. It’s fine they can be investigated after the cessation of hostilities and I’m sure the perps will face censure… It’s just endless cope masquerading as nuance really. If the IDF was behaving in largely exemplary fashion, having foreign (especially Western) journalists embedded, or given freedom to operate is the easiest PR win in the world. As to why not? Occam’s Razor isn’t always the correct maxim but it’s pretty easily applied here. Show nested quote +On October 01 2026 22:06 WombaT wrote:
Why are Israel so restrictive on access to journalists from foreign organisations then?
Hey we’re behaving exemplarily but we’ll block access to the folks who could verify that. Well, we've gone from the IDF not having foreign journalists embedded, to they're embedded, but too restrictive. In two weeks, that's pretty good. In another two weeks, who knows? Maybe some acknowledgement of security concerns, and the obvious point that any embedded foreign journalist that dies in the embed (while going off independently, free of restrictions) will just be blamed on the IDF like all the rest. Maybe even so far as to acknowledge that some outlets refuse to participate?
Well I mean you’re taking 1 and 1 and getting 4 there, not really what I said was it?
Not even sure how you came to that conclusion. They’re not contradictory points in the slightest.
War correspondents operate in all sorts of hazardous conflict zones the world over, death is an occupational hazard.
Somehow it’s only in Israel where this is a particular issue and Israel will be apparently be blamed so can’t let foreign journalists catalogue things.
I mean the BBC is such a horrendous organisation that they couldn’t get people on the ground at aid sites and had to rely on 3rd parties and IDF whistleblowers to document the thousands of people who’ve died at aid sites.
More people have died at aid sites alone than in the entirety of the Irish troubles, but hey that’s all fine and dandy nothing to see here
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On October 01 2026 18:50 Jockmcplop wrote:
Proving something is 'deliberate' is notoriously difficult, but in my personal opinion 'deliberate' is a bad standard anyway in this case.
Its not really proveable.
You can show, however, that stats heavily suggest that the killing of journalists is a result of IDF policy, and that even knowing about the results of this policy, Israel weren't motivated to change anything or do anything to mitigate it.
You can argue things to a reasonable standard, you don't need to argue things to the degree that every single islamophobe will agree with you that an event where muslims are killed is indefensible.
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Northern Ireland27436 Posts
On October 01 2026 06:16 dyhb wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2026 05:30 WombaT wrote:
The IDF sure kills a lot of civilians and journalists for an organisation not trying to I nominate WombaT for telling every nation that's ever fought urban battles his groundbreaking idea to try harder to not kill civilians.
Can someone tell the IDF that?
On October 01 2026 06:36 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2026 06:16 dyhb wrote:On October 01 2026 05:30 WombaT wrote:
The IDF sure kills a lot of civilians and journalists for an organisation not trying to I nominate WombaT for telling every nation that's ever fought urban battles his groundbreaking idea to try harder to not kill civilians. Yeah WombaT is a good person.
Haha wouldn’t go that far, but I think my rough stance on this conflict is broadly morally correct
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On October 01 2026 23:02 Jankisa wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2026 18:40 PremoBeats wrote:
Alright, prove 1, if it is your claim that they were a deliberate targeting instead of an error of some sort. Have you read the articles? Did you watch the videos in the articles? People clearly marked as press were double tapped, that is about as deliberate as it gets, all on video. Of course, for someone like you who only likes to pretend like you are all about facts and proof this is anathema, so instead of doing your usual essays you are just doing one liners. Not only a genocide denier, but also a huge hypocrite, usually comes with the territory.
Yes, I’ve read the reporting and watched footage from several of these incidents.
“They were visibly marked as press and were hit twice” does not, by itself, prove that the journalists were deliberately targeted because they were journalists. It proves that they were hit, and in a double-strike case it can certainly raise serious questions about intent and precautions.
But one of several usual military chain that explains a double strike can look like this:
identify enemy -> attempt precision strike -> strike fails / uncertain result -> engage again with another weapon. This can all occur in a false identification and it is one of several military chains.
If you’re claiming deliberate targeting, though, you need to establish the missing link: that the IDF knew they were journalists and chose to strike them for that reason, rather than, for example, targeting something else at the location, acting on intelligence that was wrong, or deliberately targeting a person they believed was a combatant.
Also, your personal attacks don't really change the evidentiary standard. If the videos establish what you say they establish, point to the specific evidence showing intent to target the journalists as journalists. That's the claim I'm asking you to prove.
On October 01 2026 23:16 WombaT wrote:
Haha wouldn’t go that far, but I think my rough stance on this conflict is broadly morally correct
Is there anyone here who does not 
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Northern Ireland27436 Posts
Somebody has to be right.
I’m relatively moderate versus many of my countrymen and women on Israel believe it or not, and I felt the state had a right to respond to the Hamas attacks.
But there’s got to be limits on what such a response looks like, and I feel Israel has massively transgressed that.
Israel’s lost a lot of international goodwill from its own actions, not because everyone is innately hostile to the state or Jews in general, although that cohort also exists
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United States44335 Posts
On October 01 2026 23:31 WombaT wrote:
Somebody has to be right.
I’m relatively moderate versus many of my countrymen and women on Israel believe it or not, and I felt the state had a right to respond to the Hamas attacks.
But there’s got to be limits on what such a response looks like, and I feel Israel has massively transgressed that.
Israel’s lost a lot of international goodwill from its own actions, not because everyone is innately hostile to the state or Jews in general, although that cohort also exists
Let's imagine we were amoral for a second. Morality aside, Israel's response is ineffective at achieving Israel's long term security objectives. We don't need to go "it's a tough scenario and there's no right answer" because there's still definitely wrong answers.
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On October 01 2026 04:50 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On September 30 2026 23:22 PremoBeats wrote:On September 29 2026 08:13 KwarK wrote:
For the killing of journalists I feel like the bar should be proving that all of them are really enemy combatants. What if publishing the evidence would compromise intelligence sources or methods? Or endangers mules? "Israel must publicly prove that every journalist was an enemy combatant” isn't a workable evidentiary standard. Some intelligence may be genuine but impossible to disclose without compromising sources, surveillance capabilities, or ongoing operations. There is also a distinction between someone being a journalist, someone being affiliated with an armed group, and someone actually losing civilian protection under IHL through direct participation in hostilities. Those aren't necessarily the same thing. Perhaps only one of several targets was a threat, but a high priority one, thus the others were deemed necessary sacrifice. The CPJ just completed a major review after discovering that some people previously classified as journalists were actually Hamas / PIJ combatants. It removed several people and says its remaining list excludes people it found to have been engaging in combat. The numbers of killed journalists matches the overall death count in Gaza in terms of deaths over time... high spikes in the first two years, now getting ever lower. There are still roughly 1k journalists working in Gaza. If the IDF's goal was to somehow scare them away without actually saying "we kill journalists, because they are journalists" I don't think it works really well, while most certainly having the effect of alienating allies and the Western world in general. On September 30 2026 01:30 Jankisa wrote:On September 29 2026 08:11 PremoBeats wrote:On September 28 2026 23:55 LightSpectra wrote:
You are extremely close to getting the point. Let's imagine for a moment a world where Israel kills journalists indiscriminately and claims all of them are Hamas-affiliated post-facto to avoid accountability. How would that world look different from the world we're currently in? So you are asserting that this is what is happening. What evidence do you have for that, beyond the hypothetical itself and "I don't like Israel and to me that is the only possible option."? Because there is an important distinction between “Israel killed a journalist and later claimed he was Hamas-affiliated” and “Israel indiscriminately kills journalists and simply invents Hamas affiliations afterward.” Israel has, in fact, provided evidence in at least some cases, including documents it says identify particular journalists as Hamas/PIJ operatives. Whether that evidence is sufficient or independently verified is another question, but it means the “they just make it up afterward” explanation can't simply be assumed. And I still don't see the strategic logic of Israel deliberately and indiscriminately killing journalists who aren't involved with Hamas or PIJ. That would create enormous international scrutiny while providing no obvious military benefit. @Jankisa: I asked you specific follow up questions. Are you able to look five posts above or is that too much to ask for? How about we discuss one of our follow ups one at a time? Perhaps that makes it easier for you. Let's start with this: "So what exactly do you want to discuss about these 2 cases that makes you think undermine the general points and concessions that have already been made? If it's evidence of unlawful conduct or failures of accountability, that's a substantially narrower claim than evidence of a deliberate policy of targeting journalists, let alone genocidal intent." I'm absolutely not going to read your bs excuses for not engaging with these obvious examples of IDF blowing up, intentionally, groups of journalists or with your weak attempts to make it about semantics of genocide. You can either say yes, these cases are problematic, or you can provide evidence and explanations which I'm not aware of that might shed a different light on them, but you are, again, completely refusing to engage with this in a way that is useful. The thesis is that Israel intentionally targets journalists to scare them out of reporting, which is a war crime, they are also refusing to investigate and impose punishment on the units responsible for them, which encourages other units and commanders to continue doing this. All of that constitutes encouragement from IDF and Israeli regime for committing war crimes and killing journalists, which is consistent with someone who wants to continue engaging in genocidal actions. Which excuses? What exactly do you want me to do if not engaging by writing several paragraphs? I am truly not sure what it is you are pushing for. My proposal was the following: I'll answer your questions about one topic, then you'll answer mine. So far, I don't understand what you are trying to prove / show with your post that you re-quoted. Hence I asked what exactly it is that you want to discuss about them. To that question, you did not reply. So I ask a third time: What exactly do you want to discuss about the links / events you posted? I seriously don't understand how they undermine the broader points I made. If you want me to blindly say "Yes, it bothers me when innocent people, including journalists, get killed in a war", I can happily do that. If you actually want to discuss (without chickening out again like with the Srebrenica / dolus specialis example), I am happy to go on. But for the continuation, I will first need to know what you actually want to discuss about the links you posted. On September 29 2026 22:21 LightSpectra wrote:On September 29 2026 08:11 PremoBeats wrote:
Israel has, in fact, provided evidence in at least some cases, including documents it says identify particular journalists as Hamas/PIJ operatives. Whether that evidence is sufficient or independently verified is another question, but it means the “they just make it up afterward” explanation can't simply be assumed. If you kill someone in self-defense, you can't then go on a wanton killing spree and say "well the first guy was in self-defense so we can be fairly certain the rest are justifiable too." And I still don't see the strategic logic of Israel deliberately and indiscriminately killing journalists who aren't involved with Hamas or PIJ. That would create enormous international scrutiny while providing no obvious military benefit. The obvious benefit is there's less live coverage of their war crimes and therefore more plausible deniability. I don't know why that would be so hard to fathom unless you're beginning with the presumption that there is no war crimes and therefore nothing to cover up. I am not arguing for that. But you - and others - are making claims that journalists are being targeted for being journalists. I've yet seen evidence for that claim. And I seriously don't understand how you picture Gaza. Do you seriously believe that the IDF thinks that it is a good tactic to deliberately target journalists through several command chains which could leak out on any level? Which alienates their allies and the West in general even if the leaks do not get out, while there are still enough willing journalists and Gazan population with cellphones out there to document the war? All for the questionable attempt to hide something which they actually plan to commit - again on several command levels - all with intent? Do you know how utterly absurd that sounds? What about the evidence from the IDF that showed "journalists" to be Hamas? What about the evidence from neutral sources like Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)? And isn't it only logical that more journalists die if you have an exceptionally high rate of them being in a war zone? While facing a much larger risk than the usual population? Do none of these arguments or none of this evidence make sense to you? Journalists go to jail to protect their sources. Why shouldn't the people who kill the journalists?
Journalists in Gaza don't do this, actually. The kind of people who would, are gatekept out of the world of Gazan journalism by Hamas to begin with.
On October 01 2026 10:36 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2026 06:59 RJGooner wrote:On October 01 2026 06:48 WombaT wrote:
It’s almost like you don’t have to do that. The British state’s response to the Troubles wasn’t just to bomb anywhere the IRA might be, and the conflict’s casualty figures are considerably lower as a result Israel never carpet-bombed Gaza. I’m no expert on British military policy but I wonder if their response might have been different if the IRA had raped and murdered 1200 people in one day, took 250 hostages, and fired 30,000 unguided rockets at civilians over three years. Interesting thought experiment I guess Ok they didn’t carpet bomb Gaza in the technical sense, they just bombed the shit out of it over a more extended period of time. Sure, point taken the two aren’t entirely analogous. The point was merely that the British state didn’t respond by reactively killing mostly civilians at a 35:1 revenge ratio or whatever
Here are my opinions. By sharing them, I'm not necessarily implying that you disagree, although I do expect you to.
IRA wasn't the government, IRA isn't the comparison. Ukraine isn't the comparison either, which is now two trench walls that are FPV drone parking lots that no journalists or otherwise civilians go near.
The comparison is modern urban "guerilla" warfare, which is like Mosul. In that case a ~70% rate of collateral, while apparently horrific, is standard/expected. That's the ratio to look at. Is that unfortunate? Yes. Can Hamas unconditionally surrender? Also yes.
Israel reacted by blowing up military sites, shared use sites, hundreds of km of tunnels, and also, terrorists. The problem for ordinary Gazans is their government put those things under their houses, in their schools, in their hospitals, and so on, then when losing, values their own bloodlust more than the people living there. So the "35:1" is from prosecuting a war after they were attacked from land that they gave up after seizing it from Egypt one of the previous times they were attacked by people wanting to genocide them. The measure of fair/moral is not whether Hamas is also strong enough to continue deliberately murdering Jews, or causing collateral deaths in Israel at the same level that they suffer. The measure of fair is whether Israel has stopped the people who attacked them from pursuing their dream of genocide of Jews.
On October 01 2026 22:06 WombaT wrote:
Why are Israel so restrictive on access to journalists from foreign organisations then?
Hey we’re behaving exemplarily but we’ll block access to the folks who could verify that.
People have created a headspace where they claim to understand collateral damage and yet think "Journalist" is a special subset of a civilian which spawns with some kind of invincibility or universal all-admittance pass to the entire world. Like yes civilians die but a Journalist™ is a bridge too far. That's idealistic, i.e., wrong.
Normal people can't go to Gaza, because Israel can't guarantee their safety, including from Hamas. And actually Israel would have to filter whether they're terrorists or giving support to the enemy that wants to exterminate their religion.
Journalists can't just wander into Gaza because they would ALSO not be safe, because it's a war zone (the current ceasefire notwithstanding), and because of Hamas. These are not nice people. People can't be naive enough to think there's freedom of the press under Hamas.
Actual Gazan journalists, I looked at two of the things linked here, one was a site got bombed, people died as collateral, and some of them were journalists.
The other one was a group of people pointing cameras at a firing tank. Now this alerted my skepticism because Hamas is an organization that regularly employs both perfidy and human shields, and they have "journalists" at the front of a firefight filming enemy movements. And these are journalists that answer to Hamas as that guy's interview revealed Hamas coordinates everything through their group chat. So the starting point for that is actually it was a really stupid activity to be engaged in.
Then someone linked the entire WPJ list. Interesting resource, but draws premature conclusions. A lot of cases, most actually, of "journalists" being targeted I saw on the WPJ list, their fair point is they do mark most as being lost to "Dangerous Assignment," but even their idea of "murder" relies on assumptions for each case.
I have come to realize since the pager thing, that actually Israel has had incredible intelligence for decades. This is a country with nuclear weapons, if they wanted to kill everyone in any situation, in Lebanon, in Gaza, they would be able to do it. They wouldn't warn civilians of strikes, they wouldn't evacuate civilians. They wouldn't let aid in. They obviously take great care. But they cannot take infinite care. Nor can they be expected to compromise their own intelligence by accounting for everything during a war.
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Northern Ireland27436 Posts
On October 01 2026 23:37 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2026 23:31 WombaT wrote:
Somebody has to be right.
I’m relatively moderate versus many of my countrymen and women on Israel believe it or not, and I felt the state had a right to respond to the Hamas attacks.
But there’s got to be limits on what such a response looks like, and I feel Israel has massively transgressed that.
Israel’s lost a lot of international goodwill from its own actions, not because everyone is innately hostile to the state or Jews in general, although that cohort also exists Let's imagine we were amoral for a second. Morality aside, Israel's response is ineffective at achieving Israel's long term security objectives. We don't need to go "it's a tough scenario and there's no right answer" because there's still definitely wrong answers.
Also that
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On October 01 2026 23:21 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2026 23:02 Jankisa wrote:On October 01 2026 18:40 PremoBeats wrote:
Alright, prove 1, if it is your claim that they were a deliberate targeting instead of an error of some sort. Have you read the articles? Did you watch the videos in the articles? People clearly marked as press were double tapped, that is about as deliberate as it gets, all on video. Of course, for someone like you who only likes to pretend like you are all about facts and proof this is anathema, so instead of doing your usual essays you are just doing one liners. Not only a genocide denier, but also a huge hypocrite, usually comes with the territory. Yes, I’ve read the reporting and watched footage from several of these incidents. “They were visibly marked as press and were hit twice” does not, by itself, prove that the journalists were deliberately targeted because they were journalists. It proves that they were hit, and in a double-strike case it can certainly raise serious questions about intent and precautions. But one of several usual military chain that explains a double strike can look like this: identify enemy -> attempt precision strike -> strike fails / uncertain result -> engage again with another weapon. This can all occur in a false identification and it is one of several military chains. If you’re claiming deliberate targeting, though, you need to establish the missing link: that the IDF knew they were journalists and chose to strike them for that reason, rather than, for example, targeting something else at the location, acting on intelligence that was wrong, or deliberately targeting a person they believed was a combatant. Also, your personal attacks don't really change the evidentiary standard. If the videos establish what you say they establish, point to the specific evidence showing intent to target the journalists as journalists. That's the claim I'm asking you to prove. Show nested quote +On October 01 2026 23:16 WombaT wrote:
Haha wouldn’t go that far, but I think my rough stance on this conflict is broadly morally correct Is there anyone here who does not
All of the things you are asking for are listed in the articles. The journalists were there for more then an hour before they were murdered:
“We weren’t hiding under the trees or anything. We were very clearly seven well-marked journalists, in press vests with helmets with a car that has ‘TV’ on it, standing in an open area in the face of an Israeli military site, maybe two kilometres, one and a half away from us to our west and to our east, multiple watchtowers,” said Collins.
“They knew we were there for well over an hour.”
They choose this location because:
Nazeh said they felt relatively safe because they were clearly identified as journalists and in plain sight of the Israeli military - on the ground and in the air.
“My assessment is that we were in the safest possible place. We were very comfortable, sitting, filming and laughing and not feeling in danger because we would have never expected that they would hit journalists,” said Nazeh.
There were drones and IDF helicopters flying over, the tank that hit them was less then a mile away, they could clearly see that these were journalists.
And yet, no investigation, no apology, just straight up unrepentant murder.
The other article, well, I'm not going to re-tell it, you aren't going to read it because, again, you are a propagandist, so what's the point.
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